IFISO – Leadership Summer School

IFISO – Informal Forum of International Student Organisations http://ifiso.org – is such an international umbrella organisation which has the aim to gather, develop and train its members. Actually it’s a communicational surface, a place to exchange trainers and share best practices, to initiate and work on joint projects, not to mention networking possibilities. All in all, it is some kind of “clamp” which connects its member organizations with each other. To ensure these aims, IFISO organises regularly bi-annual meetings which are hosted by each time different organisations at different locations.

The most significant result of its activities is the almost 5 years old, highly successful project called Leadership Summer School (LSS), which took place last time in 07/2011 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania http://www.leadershipsummerschool.org/ .

It was a big and intensive training event, with a great impact. In numbers, around 70 participants, 15 trainers working 8 long days with an amazing, hard-working organizing team of 4 associations from Cluj.

But why am I writing about all this?

AEGEE-Europe is also a member of IFISO, thus members of AEGEE had also the opportunity to apply for LSS 2011. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get in the team which I did not regret at all!

I left to the event with really high expectations after a long application procedure. It consisted of 2 rounds of filling entry-forms and some homework in advance with our future “housemates” . Well, to be honest, these 8 days exceeded my expectations.

The thing looked like the following, we were split up into several Harry Potter style “houses” (4-7 person + 1 trainer, who was our housemaster/mistress). We got to know each other online before the event and visited almost all of the trainings together during the 8 days. Afterwards each day, after the programs we gathered and made a reflections round, discussing about the happenings of the day.

Besides this, at the very start of the event we were also placed into rooms with people who we didn’t know that time and were not members of our houses. At the trainings we were meeting different houses to be able to get to know each other with all of the participants. This worked pretty well:)

About the training itself:

The program was really thoughtfully built up, all of the sessions were based on each other and at the end of each session we could give our feedbacks on it and evaluate them one by one. The trainers collected this information and took them into account by forming the upcoming sessions. The trainers actually didn’t even sleep, because they were constantly updating their trainings in order to deliver the most useful sessions for us, to get the best out of them. There were more sessions happening parallel, to have manageable groups consisting max. 20 people.

Even my sceptical approach got totally changed during the event as even the sessions which sounded for me as “bullshit topics” came out to be very valuable and could always give something new to me. I could gain a lot of new knowledge and experiences during the sessions and also outside of them, thanks to the company there.

I have learned a lot during these 8 days about what can make someone a good leader, I could develop my skills and meet different approaches on leadership and people. I also got to learn about how to approach and handle people, personality types, motivation, conflict and change management etc. I got to know a bunch of highly valuable and interesting people, who I’m sure I’ll keep in touch with for a long time. Due to them, I got also the possibility to have an insight in several NGOs and share experiences and best practices with them. Besides all this, I also got the chance to learn a lot about myself, which is not easy at all, but more than useful:)

You can find the detailed program of the training on the webpage I linked before. If any of you would be interested about some more details or any other information about the event, feel free to ask me via mail: bernadett.polya@aegee-budapest.hu or even personally.

I’m sure, that the knowledge I could gain at LSS 2011 will be more than useful and implemented not only in the world of AEGEE and other student NGOs, but in my personal and professional life also.

To sum up this whole amazing experience of mine, I’m more than happy that I could participate at LSS. I’ve never attended such an inspiring and motivating (I believe, this is a very rare opportunity) event, where you can spend 9 unforgettable days in a wonderful atmosphere with amazing people, professional trainers and organizers where you actually enjoy each second of the event! I would like to encourage all of you to apply to the upcoming LSS 2012. These are the moments when you have the feeling even stronger in you, that “yes, it is worth it to be part of the student organization life and I love it”.

Bernadett Pólya

AEGEE-Budapest